This weekend was a whirlwind of outdoor activities for me. On Saturday was the I-580 "opening" - an event that allowed walkers, runners and cyclists the opportunity to get on the new freeway portion between Reno and Carson City. I connected up with a few other cyclists and hit the roads from home to ride the new stretch. All told the ride was a nice 41 miles for me, with some good offshoot climbs in Washoe Valley on the way back. You know, because 41 miles is simply not enough as it is. The freeway will be nice once it opens for realz sometime in the next month. It'll make my daily trip to the kids' school a faster and more pleasant experience with freeway speeds the entire distance, and eliminating a couple of typically long stoplights.

I estimate a few thousand people participated while I was there, and only a few idiots who thought weaving through crowds impressed us all with their biking prowess. I did spot one teen girl wearing her helmet backwards, but couldn't get to my phone fast enough to snap a pic. I did snap a few other photos though.

Abbey on her mountain bike!

Mt. Rose in the distance.

The "bridge" and Mt. Rose ski area.

Chuck, who's making me a better cyclist every ride.

That's a long way down...

The ride was nice, my butt bones didn't hurt as much as in the past when we finished. Must be callusing. The surface was nice and smooth for the most part, but there were a couple of places where the connection from surface roadway to bridge surface wasn't complete. Saw more than one water bottle skittering off across the road when the bike hit the bump!

Sunday was run-day. I didn't expect much in the way of company, since as of Friday afternoon, I had received no responses to the run announcement. Given that, and my propensity for exploration, I loaded up the Nathan with 70 ounces, mixed a batch of Perpetuem liquid with chia seeds for nutrition in a couple of smaller hip bottles, and I was good for a decent length trip.

I had been out to 4th of July Lake a few times, always beautiful, but as an out and back, an anathema to my desire to tread new ground as much as possible. I had seen that there is a possible lasso with only 1 mile of repeated terrain possible and decided that since nobody was coming, I'd do it.

Turns out, there were a couple of attendees. I left it up to them as to if they wanted to do the lasso or an out and back. Both elected to explore. Boy, was that a mistake on their parts!

The home stretch. Kind of. Still had about 4 miles, and a steep ascent ahead.

Things went pretty well, I was sharing my water and nutrition with one of the women, who, despite not bringing anything but a hand bottle, decided to do the whole thing. She's an amazingly strong runner, but she was still feeling the effects of the 50-miler from the weekend previous. During the ascent from the pit, I got lots of looks, and at one point they both semi-seriously clobbered me and fired me from ever leading another run. At about mile 9, I gave her the last of the water in my Nathan. It made for a dry finish. I offered to buy her breakfast once we were done. I figured it was the least I could do after screwing her so badly on the run.

Instead of breakfast, we did have a couple of classic Cokes and an order of fries at the Carson City Red Hut. Tasted awesome after the run!

4th of July Lake is at the flat spot 2/3 down on the big descent.

All in all, this was a great weekend. Exhausting, yes, but it's great to be out and about in this part of the globe this time of year. Remind me of that when it's not so nice come January.

I think I'm going to coin a new acronym: YAWBE. Pronounced "yaw-bee" it stands for "Yet Another Weekend Blog Entry." Seems to fit. Since it sort of forms a word, it can safely be called an acronym. Otherwise it's an initialism. I learn something new every day.

Go ahead and notch another action-packed and fun -filled weekend on the books. Why does it seem they seem to come and go ever faster as the years pass? Reminds me of a particular kind of doughnut. A "Sucks, don't it?" kind of doughnut. There is a theory out there about time moving faster as one gets older; I'll do some research on it and get back to y'all when I recall what I've read and/or find out more.

As for this weekend, it was great! It started on Friday, when I was just about to walk out the door for a casual run. A friend called and asked if I would be willing to lead a visitor on a trail run in the area. Nothing too difficult, about 7 miles or so. I agreed, though the mileage was higher than I really wanted to do, since I was planning a 13 on Saturday morning.

We met at the Carson Station Best Western, and I lead the way up Lower and Upper EZ trails on C-Hill. Theresa was having some difficulty given the elevation (she's from much lower - <1000') and a recent cold, so we cut over on the Flag Trail, down the Goat Trail and headed back. I was fine with the 5.5!

Saturday morning was a posted run on ccrunners. 9 miles at 8:30 in Ash Canyon, and a pre-loading 4 on the V&T Lasso at 7:45 for any who were willing. Well, none were. I did the lasso solo (always nice) but the wind was biting and the temps on the chilly side: around 45. I got back to the start and waited to see who would appear for the 9 miler. Again, none.

Sad really. Invite a crowd and get nobody to show. Perhaps I should have showered between the Friday run and the Saturday one? At any rate, I decided I didn't want to play in the cold wind, so I bagged the 9 myself and went home to get ready for my son's 13th birthday party. The party was originally slated to be at a local water park, but given the chilly conditions, we moved it to an indoor trampoline park. Wow, did they have a grand time!

After the party, a few of the new teens came back to the house and had a sleepover. I'm glad I don't have to do much about those anymore; pretty much clean up the kitchen after late night snacking is all.

Sunday was a run and run and work-a-run day. I first ran to Hobart Reservoir from Lakeview. Tough climb up. According to RunningAhead, it was a 5000' elev gain and loss in the 11 miles. Yikes! But the view was spectabulous:

I spent a few minutes in the sun stretching, snapped the above photo, and headed back down the hill. I had a busy slate still ahead. After getting home, it was a couple of chores around the house and then off and gone to the Melanie Pfieffer Melanoma 5K. I had volunteered to do the timing for the event. I got there early to scope/run the course. It was an easy out and back, with only one street-crossing hazard. Get a couple of people at that point for safety and all would be good.

I had my camera in my pocket, but never got around to snapping any photos. Bummer. Maybe somebody who was there will read this and send me some. Far fetched, I know, because it implies people read this. :-)

Only about half the participants had pre-registered before the cutoff, so I was a busy boy, tap-tap-tapping data into the timing app on my iPhone (PocketTimer Pro). I had barely gotten them in (OK, I actually hadn't gotten them all), when the starting horn sounded. I added a few after the start (Nice feature, by the way.) and was prepped for the finishers.

If you're interested here are the results. I didn't hang around for the free buffett afterward at El Charro, though it looked amazing. The room was crowded, and there was nowhere to sit by the time I got the results organized. I don't do crowds well anyway, so I let the organizers know the results had been both sent to them and posted, and bugged out to a great roast beast dinner at home.

After totally oinking down dinner, it was crash-and-burn time. What a great weekend!